Small business SEO is crucial for those who run a small business website. A lot of business owners have been asking about whether it’s worth to invest on SEO for their website. In some cases, the answer is yes, but not always. Just as with other Internet marketing strategies, it can be difficult to decide whether online marketing for your brand or business is even worthwhile. Business owners don’t need to do an SEO audit (at least not initially) because you likely already know if SEO is worthwhile for your company or organization. The tactics you take might depend on what type of business you own or run.
In this article, we focus on the tips to having the right seo strategy for small businesses. So we start off with the first point:
Find the right keywords
Think about the words your clients are likely to use when looking for your products or services on the web. If you’re selling appliances, for example, are your customers more likely to use a formal word like refrigerator or a slang word like fridge?
Make a list of 20 to 50 keywords, then go on Google AdWords. Once you have created an account if you haven’t already done so, you can validate that the keywords you chose are frequently used in online searches.
You can also use a Google AdWords product called Keyword Tool to find more keywords to build your list.
Use your keywords on each of your website pages to help them rank higher when prospective customers search using those keywords.
Start by using keywords in the URL—the address appearing in the Internet browser for each of your website pages. Also include them in your titles as well as in your metadata descriptions (the brief text that tells search engines what your content is about).
Focus on your unique offerings
Remember you’re competing against other companies for attention online from prospective customers. To rise above the pack in web searches for your industry, look for words that correspond to your market differentiators such as your unique offerings or geographic location.
Competition is also stiff for keywords you buy as part of a pay-per-click campaign, where an ad for your company appears above or beside the free search results. You pay the search engine company each time your link is clicked. Again, you will have to focus on niche keywords if you don’t have a big budget. In your quest on unique offerings, take note of the following:
Develop a professional mobile-friendly business website.
Your website must be professional and should provide a rich experience and the feel of your brand to users. Here are a few tips to make your website professional and SEO-friendly:
• Use your business logo and branding on your website.
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly (more than half of local searches are mobile searches)
• Your website should load in less than three seconds.
• Use a clean, minimal design, and avoid fancy styles.
• Your website must be well structured and easy to use.
Many business owners waste too much money creating a professional small business website. But there is no need to waste too much money on a business website. You can create a professional website for less than $500. So don’t waste more money on website design, but invest that extra money in SEO.
Identify profitable keywords.
The success of an SEO campaign depends on the targeted keywords. That’s why you need to choose the right and profitable keywords for your small business. All keywords are not equal; some keywords could have high search volume but not profitability, while some could be profitable but have small volumes.
Also, focus on long-tail keywords because they are easy to rank and more profitable than short keywords. The profitability of a keyword depends on the nature of the keyword. For that, you need to understand the intent behind that keyword — why a user is searching that.
For example, when a person searches “ice cream” on Google, they want to know about ice cream, which means it has informational intent. But when a person searches for “best choco-milk ice cream near me,” the person wants to eat ice cream. This will be a profitable keyword for you to target.
Don’t overstuff your site with keywords
As Google’s webmaster guidelines states: “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”
If you are just sprinkling keywords all over your content, you risk distorting the meaning and irritating readers, so don’t overdo it.
Your priority should be to make the text clear and easy to read.
Build links to your site
The more sites that carry links to your site, the higher you will rank on searches. Ask the owners of related sites to carry a link to your site. Offer to carry a link to theirs in exchange for a link to yours.
Focus on the quality of the links. One link directing to your website from a chamber of commerce or a university website will help you more than a dozen links from obscure blogs.
Here is a brief tip to start an SEO company
If you’re launching a new business, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start. For a better idea of what you’ll need to do to set up an SEO business, check out this quick step-by-step guide:
- Find your target market. SEO marketing is a very competitive field, so you’ll have a hard time standing out as a generic SEO agency. That’s why it’s a good idea to choose an in-demand niche market on which you can focus your efforts.
- Develop your business plan. Next, decide which services your agency will and won’t offer. For example, while some businesses focus solely on SEO, others offer a full suite of online services including advertising and social media management. You’ll also need to decide which services you will offer – either yourself or via employees – and which will be outsourced to freelancers and other agencies.
- Choose your business structure. Will you be entering into business as a sole trader, starting a partnership or even launching a new company? Each approach has its own pros and cons which we’ll outline further down the page.
- Build your online brand. If you’re going to attract new clients in the world of SEO, your business website will need to rank highly for a number of keywords. Your site should also be professional and informative, offering potential clients and insight into what you can offer.
- Consider your legal requirements. Now it’s time to think about what legal documents you need drawn up. For example, as well as contracts and non-disclosure agreements, you’ll also need to consider important documents like a website privacy policy and terms and conditions. You may want to hire a business lawyer or use an online legal service to help with this.
- Calculate pricing. What is your ideal rate? Will you charge clients hourly, a fixed price per project, or a monthly retainer? Remember to consider your time, skills, business overheads and tax obligations when setting your prices.
- Create an SEO proposal template. This document will help you pitch your services to new clients. It introduces your business and what you do, outlines any key problems with the client’s website and explains how your SEO agency can solve them.
- Build a portfolio. You’ll also need to be able to display a successful body of work to new clients. Testimonials from previous clients and details of the solutions you’ve provided for their business (such as high search rankings) will help you build your customer base.
- Find new clients. Online advertising, applying for projects on freelance marketplaces, tapping into your own personal network – there are several strategies you can use to grow your business. We’ll tell you more about them further down the page.
- Deliver results. The key to growing your SEO business and consolidating your success is looking after your clients. Deliver on your promises and you’ll go a long way towards ensuring that they become repeat customers.
Publish high-quality content and lots of it
The main mission of search engines is to help people find answers to their questions. So your best strategy to get lots of traffic is to create compelling content—articles, videos and photos—that provides quality information to your readers. Make sure to update your content frequently so it stays relevant.
A good content strategy will also position you as a thought leader in your field.
Get social
Social media is a great ally in your SEO strategy because people also use social media platforms as search engines. They’ll often search for companies or products using Facebook’s search function, for example. Your company’s social media profile will also rank in the search results when people search for your company or for related terms. On your quest, here are few keypoints to take note on:
Create a separate page for each product.
I found that many small businesses list all their products on one page like the homepage, but this is not a good practice. If you want to get more profit from your local SEO efforts, then you should create specific pages for each product. That way you can rank higher for each product page for multiple keywords.
For example, if you have a clothing store website, then you need to create separate pages for each product, such as one page for jeans and another for shirts. Also, you can create further subpages, such as jeans > men jeans > blue jeans. This can boost your rankings and revenue and reduce your efforts.
Use schema.
Structured data is helping Google better understand webpages. That’s why it can help you rank higher and get the advantage of other SERP features like featured snippets, knowledge graphs, etc. Product schema, local business, FAQ and others are must-use schema types for every business.
Optimize for ‘near me’ and voice searches.
As I mentioned before, around one-third of all searches are local “near me” searches, which is why you should optimize your website for local searches.
But, more than half of these searches are voice searches. You should optimize your website for both.
Keep business listings up to date.
For small businesses, business listing profiles such as Google My Business (GMB) are important. A GMB profile can help you rank on Google and get new customers for your small business.
That’s why you should optimize your GMB profile properly and keep it updated with the latest details, including working hours, images, phone numbers, email, etc. Users will be able to get to know more about your business and can contact you and buy from you.
Acquire local backlinks.
Local backlinks and citations are very important parts of a successful local SEO campaign. You can ask your business partners, local business directories, local news publications, etc. to link and cover your business.
Conclusion
SEO is an important if not the most important aspect when it comes to marketing. Online business is in need for online visibility and in order to achieve it one needs to have the best SEO in place. Effective Search Engine Optimization or SEO can help you make your startup or already existent business grow in different ways.